Extending Black Diamond with Unified Data & AI

This guide explains how BD firms extend their platform with a unified data layer — and covers the other portfolio platforms (Addepar, Orion, Envestnet Tamarac) that some firms consider when their needs go beyond what any single data layer can solve. The right answer depends on where your actual gap is.

One note: Milemarker is the data layer described here, and we're the ones who built this guide. We've written it as honestly as we can, but you should factor that in — and we'd encourage you to do your own diligence on all options.

Why Black Diamond Firms Add a Data Layer

Black Diamond is good at what it's built for: portfolio management, performance reporting, and client portal experience. The firms adding a data layer aren't doing it because BD is failing at those things. They're doing it because modern advisory operations require more than any single portfolio platform can provide.

Cross-System Analytics: BD + CRM + Custodian + Planning

Advisory firms run multiple systems simultaneously — Black Diamond for portfolios, Salesforce or Redtail for client relationships, Schwab or Fidelity as custodians, eMoney or MoneyGuidePro for planning. Each system holds a piece of the picture, but no single system sees across all of them. A data layer connects every source into one place, enabling firm-wide analytics that BD alone cannot generate: household rollup views, AUM-to-relationship health scoring, planning-to-portfolio alignment, and cross-system compliance reporting.

AI Capabilities Across All Data

AI in wealth management requires clean, unified, accessible data as a prerequisite. Black Diamond holds your portfolio data. But next-best-action AI needs CRM history. Churn-prediction models need service records, planning data, and custodian cash flows. Generative AI assistants need context from every system. A data layer creates the unified foundation that AI applications require — something no portfolio management platform is designed to provide on its own.

Unified Household Views

Households in BD don't automatically reflect the full client relationship — accounts at multiple custodians, assets held in planning tools, family relationships in CRM, insurance products in other platforms. A data layer creates a true unified household view by joining data across all systems, giving advisors and compliance teams a complete picture that BD's portfolio-centric data model wasn't designed to produce.

Data Ownership and Portability

As firms become more data-sophisticated, they want to own and control their data — not just access it through a vendor's portal. A data layer like Milemarker delivers portfolio data, CRM records, custodian feeds, and planning outputs into a firm-owned Snowflake warehouse. Your data is yours, fully portable, and usable by any analytics or AI tool your team chooses — independent of any single vendor's roadmap.

Black Diamond: Strengths & Considerations

What Black Diamond Does Well

• Client portal experience: Black Diamond's client-facing portal is widely regarded as one of the cleaner user experiences in the category. Clients can view performance, holdings, and documents in a unified interface.
• Performance reporting: Deep, configurable performance reporting with time-weighted and money-weighted return calculations, benchmark comparisons, and custom reporting periods.
• Billing and fee management: Integrated billing capabilities handle fee calculations, billing schedules, and invoice generation — reducing the need for a separate billing system.
• SS&C ecosystem integration: For firms already using SS&C products, Black Diamond connects cleanly to Advent and other SS&C tools, reducing integration overhead.
• Scale and stability: $3.6T administered, thousands of firm relationships, and over a decade of operation under SS&C ownership represent significant scale and institutional stability.

Where Firms Report Friction

• SS&C-centric integration: Connecting Black Diamond to non-SS&C tools — particularly newer CRMs, planning platforms, or data warehouses — can require more effort than integrating within the SS&C suite.
• Data lives in SS&C infrastructure: Firms that want direct access to raw data for analytics, data science, or AI projects find that Black Diamond's data model is designed for the platform's own use cases first.
• Pricing scales with AUM: As firms grow, AUM-based pricing can outpace perceived value, particularly if firms are using only a subset of available features.
• Vendor concentration risk: Firms with multiple SS&C products have significant vendor concentration. If the relationship deteriorates or SS&C's product direction shifts, the migration cost is substantial.

Platform Option: Addepar

What Addepar Does Well

Addepar was built specifically for the complexity that comes with managing substantial wealth across multiple custodians and non-standard assets. Its data model handles alternative investments — private equity, hedge funds, real estate limited partnerships — more natively than most portfolio platforms, which were designed primarily around publicly traded securities.

• Alternative asset support: Native data structures for illiquid assets, capital calls, distributions, and complex waterfall calculations that most portfolio platforms handle poorly or not at all.
• Multi-custodian aggregation: Designed from the ground up to aggregate data across dozens of custodians, prime brokers, and private fund administrators.
• Custom reporting: Highly flexible reporting engine that can be configured for the unique reporting needs of family offices, endowments, and institutional wealth managers.
• Data model depth: Addepar's underlying data model is more sophisticated than most portfolio platforms, which translates to more accurate analytics on complex portfolios.

Considerations

Addepar's sophistication comes with higher implementation complexity and cost. It is typically positioned for firms managing $1B+ AUM with meaningful allocations to alternatives. Firms with primarily traditional portfolios across a single custodian may find Addepar's capabilities exceed their needs and that its pricing reflects features they won't use. Implementation timelines are longer than simpler portfolio platforms.

Best for: RIAs and family offices managing HNW/UHNW clients with significant alternative asset exposure and multi-custodian relationships.

Platform Option: Orion

What Orion Does Well

Orion's primary value proposition is breadth. Rather than excelling at a single capability, Orion offers a vertically integrated stack that covers most of what an advisory firm needs from a single vendor relationship. For firms that want to minimize the number of software vendors they manage and integrate, Orion reduces complexity significantly.

• End-to-end coverage: Portfolio management, rebalancing, trading, billing, compliance, CRM (via Redtail acquisition), and financial planning under one umbrella.
• Orion Risk Intelligence: Built-in risk analytics and behavioral finance tools that integrate with the broader platform.
• Transition assistance: Orion invests in onboarding support and data migration for firms switching from other platforms, reducing transition friction.
• Pricing clarity: As a publicly visible platform with broad market presence, Orion pricing tends to be more transparent and benchmarkable than some competitors.

Considerations

Single-vendor platforms create a different kind of concentration risk: if Orion's product direction, pricing, or service quality changes, migrating away from an end-to-end stack is more disruptive than switching a single-point solution. Firms that have specific best-of-breed requirements in individual categories (reporting depth, CRM flexibility, planning sophistication) may find Orion's individual components less capable than specialized alternatives.

Best for: Firms that want to consolidate vendors, simplify their technology stack, and accept some capability trade-offs in exchange for operational simplicity and a single support relationship.

Platform Option: Envestnet Tamarac

What Tamarac Does Well

Tamarac holds approximately 18% market share among RIA portfolio management platforms, making it the category leader by firm count. That scale matters: it means extensive integration support across custodians and third-party tools, a large community of users and consultants who know the platform, and a vendor with institutional resources to maintain and develop the product.

• Market-leading integration network: Tamarac's custodian and third-party integration library is among the broadest in the category, supported by Envestnet's infrastructure.
• Rebalancing and trading: Robust model management, rebalancing automation, and trading workflows that are well-regarded across firm sizes.
• Advisory fee billing: Mature billing and fee management that handles complex billing scenarios across household structures and billing cycles.
• Advisor portal and reporting: Configurable reporting and an advisor-facing portal that serves most standard wealth management reporting use cases.
• Envestnet ecosystem access: Access to Envestnet's broader platform — analytics, insurance solutions, tax management, and planning tools — for firms that want to expand into adjacent capabilities.

Considerations

Tamarac is a mature platform, which means it covers the core use cases reliably but may move more slowly on newer capabilities like advanced AI integrations or data portability features that smaller, more focused vendors prioritize. Firms acquired by larger organizations have sometimes found that Envestnet's corporate priorities don't always align tightly with RIA-specific feature requests.

Best for: Mid-market RIAs ($500M–$5B AUM) that want a proven, widely supported platform with broad integration coverage and stability as a primary criterion.

Milemarker: The Data Layer for Black Diamond Firms

What Milemarker Adds to Black Diamond

Milemarker is not a portfolio management platform. It does not do performance reporting, rebalancing, trading, or client portals. It does something none of those platforms can: it connects BD's portfolio data to every other system your firm runs and gives you a unified, AI-ready data foundation.

• BD-to-CRM connection: Joins Black Diamond portfolio data to Salesforce, Redtail, or Wealthbox — enabling household views that combine portfolio performance with relationship history, service records, and client lifecycle data.
• BD-to-custodian unification: Connects Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing, and 30+ custodians alongside BD, giving you a single view of assets across all custodians rather than reconciling them manually.
• BD-to-planning alignment: Links eMoney, MoneyGuidePro, and RightCapital planning data to BD's portfolio data — so advisors can see portfolio-to-plan alignment in one place.
• Cross-system analytics: Reporting and analytics that span portfolio data, CRM data, planning data, and operational data simultaneously — the kind of firm-wide analytics no single-system platform can provide.
• AI across all systems: Milemarker creates the unified data foundation that AI applications require — from next-best-action to churn prediction to generative AI assistants that understand your full client picture.
• Firm-owned data warehouse: Your data lives in a Snowflake instance you own and control, not in a vendor's infrastructure. When you stop using Milemarker, your data stays with you.

Considerations

Milemarker requires that a firm have some appetite for working with data — either an internal data or technology team, or a willingness to build that capability. Firms that want a turnkey portfolio reporting solution with no data infrastructure involvement will be better served by one of the portfolio management platforms above. Milemarker is built for firms that are serious about data as a strategic asset — and who want to get more from the systems they already run, including Black Diamond.

Best for: Black Diamond firms building cross-system analytics, AI capabilities, or data-driven operations. Milemarker extends BD's value rather than replacing it — connecting portfolio data to CRM, custodians, planning, and operations in a single firm-owned warehouse.

Side-by-Side Comparison

The table below compares each platform across the dimensions firms most commonly evaluate. Use this as a starting point, not a final answer — every firm's situation is different and vendor capabilities evolve.

Decision Framework

The right path depends on where your actual gap is. Most BD firms fall into one of two situations — and only one of them requires switching portfolio platforms:

When to Stay with Black Diamond Alone

If your firm runs a relatively simple tech stack — one custodian, one CRM, and BD for reporting — and that combination is meeting your needs, the marginal value of a data layer is lower. BD alone handles straightforward portfolio reporting well. Firms with fewer than $500M AUM and a single advisor team often find that BD's native capabilities are sufficient without additional infrastructure. The cost and complexity of a data layer should be weighed honestly against your current friction.

When to Extend BD with a Data Layer

When your firm runs multiple systems that don't talk to each other — BD for portfolios, a CRM for relationships, multiple custodians, one or more planning tools — the gap between what each system knows and what your advisors need is a data problem, not a portfolio management problem. Switching BD for Orion or Tamarac doesn't solve it. Adding Milemarker as a data layer does: it connects every system into one place, gives you cross-system analytics and AI capabilities, and preserves the BD workflows your team already knows.

When to Switch Portfolio Platforms

A platform switch makes sense when the gap is specifically in BD's core portfolio management function — alternative asset support, performance calculation methodology, or client portal experience. These are things a data layer can't solve; they require a platform designed to handle them natively. If your primary friction is that BD can't model your alternative asset portfolios, Addepar may be the right move. If you want to consolidate from five vendors to one, Orion deserves a serious look. If stability and integration breadth are your criteria, Tamarac is the market leader for a reason.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Black Diamond is a capable, mature portfolio management platform with real strengths in client portal experience, performance reporting, and integration within the SS&C ecosystem. For most firms using BD, the question is not whether to replace it — it's how to get more from the data that BD and every other system in your stack is already generating.

A data layer that connects Black Diamond to your CRM, custodians, planning tools, and operational systems closes the gap that portfolio management alone can't close. You get unified household views, cross-system analytics, compliance automation, and an AI-ready data foundation — without disrupting the BD workflows your advisors and operations teams already rely on.

For firms whose primary gap is in core portfolio management — alternative asset support, performance methodology, client portal depth — evaluating Addepar, Orion, or Tamarac as platform alternatives is the right move. But for the majority of BD firms, the right answer is extending what you have, not replacing it.